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Debunking Princeton

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Re: Debunking Princeton

#81

Post by zhaodaxiong »

btown wrote: post #19

What drove Cannarella and Spechler, two mechanical engineering Ph.D. students, to prerelease a paper about network theory and epidemiology, without coauthoring/consulting with epidemiologists or people experienced in viral communications theories, is beyond me. But the title "Debunking Princeton" seems to suggest this should be considered representative of all of the quality of research Princeton outputs, which is ce…

2 princeton students write a paper on Facebook, declining 1 facebook employee write a post on Princeton, declining Perfect match... Dude, it's not about the scientific contribution of the paper... Do I need to emphasize this obvious thing to a Princeton alumni?... If I do, I do worry that Facebook post is speaking the truth...

Re: Debunking Princeton

#82

Post by jrs99 »

dsugarman wrote: post #33
hooande wrote: post #13

I hope this becomes a bigger story than the original. I can't tell you how many times someone has thrown a junk science article in my face, thinking that the issue in question was now settled. A survey with a small sample size, outsized extrapolations and numbers that don't match the accompanying conjecture. There should be consequences for the people who publish these things. People have a tendency to believe anythi…

while I think the original wasn't close to real science, don't be surprised if they are somewhat right

what the heck is "real" science? A lot of the greatest science started the same exact way. Making connections that nobody else could see. Finding purposefully playful, surprising analogies. Doing things so ludicrous that everyone said would not work. Exploring ideas and sharing them.

Re: Debunking Princeton

#83

Post by CGamesPlay »

sabbatic13 wrote: post #69
STRiDEX wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The action of the two PH.D. candidates. The action of few employees. Yet they both represent the group to which they belong.

Bullshit. 4500 undergrads, 1500 graduate students, and hundreds of faculty, and you think that every little paper they give or study they conduct is a product of the whole in a meaningful sense? The study was practically just a thought experiment by two grad students looking at something outside of their expertise. It _only_ got any attention, because it was about Facebook, and so the media saw a chance to sell more…

The students also published it online before it was peer-reviewed. I think the grandparent is more referring to the typical corporate cop-out of "the actions of a few employees", even though the damage is done regardless of who did it--and the employees (or students) did it under the name of the organization.

Re: Debunking Princeton

#84

Post by ecuzzillo »

throwaway_yy2Di wrote: post #26
hooande wrote: post #13

I hope this becomes a bigger story than the original. I can't tell you how many times someone has thrown a junk science article in my face, thinking that the issue in question was now settled. A survey with a small sample size, outsized extrapolations and numbers that don't match the accompanying conjecture. There should be consequences for the people who publish these things. People have a tendency to believe anythi…

" There should be consequences for the people who publish these things. " Many who are published deserve obscurity. And some who have obscurity deserve more funding. Can you give it to them? Do not be so eager to deal out censorship; for even institutional review boards cannot see all ends.

s/censorship/censure/

Re: Debunking Princeton

#85

Post by chaz »

bhouston wrote: post #75
chaz wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is less about the technique, but about the flawed assumptions about the data that they used, and how they assumed that it was a valid basis for a paper. That undermines the whole thing, no matter the rigor of the analysis. The medium matters, too. I'm all for people discussing crazy ideas and seeing what sticks, but when they wrote a paper about it and submitted it to arXiv.org ("Submissions to arXiv shou…

I think that discussing this in academia is worthy. One paper can start a discussion, another paper can improve on it or disprove it and so forth. I think that putting out a paper with a controversial conclusion is not wrong, it is merely provocative. I hope there is more study on this and that it is serious. I also do not think they are completely wrong. I think there is general consensus that in North America we ha…

It's worth exploring and discussing, and if academia wants to get involved, their contributions are welcome. I just think that they shouldn't be surprised when the lede is about "Princeton researchers" by mass media.

> I think there is general consensus that in North America we have likely reached peak Facebook engagement

I disagree. There are signs that US teens are decreasing engagement or maybe not even registering: http://istrategylabs.com/2014/01/3-million-teens-leave-faceb.... However, other age groups are apparently doing well, and there's no sign that 80% of users will leave by 2017.

On the whole, they continue to grow. The question is whether the teens are an early indicator that will apply to all demos/geos and that they will all decline, or if there's maturation in the product and that it better fits an older demo and the teens will grow into FB in later years. Or maybe something else.

Re: Debunking Princeton

#86

Post by [deleted] »

ajju wrote: post #61
yuvadam wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those look like numbers from Facebook's SEC filings, which says all there is to say about which metrics they're choosing to publish. (Read the post, didn't miss it.)

Not sure what you expect them to publish beyond MAUs and DAUs by region. Those are pretty standard ways to measure engagement and if I were Facebook I'd be loathe to publish more granular data just to "quiet the critics".

[deleted]

Re: Debunking Princeton

#87

Post by bhouston »

CGamesPlay wrote: post #83
sabbatic13 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bullshit. 4500 undergrads, 1500 graduate students, and hundreds of faculty, and you think that every little paper they give or study they conduct is a product of the whole in a meaningful sense? The study was practically just a thought experiment by two grad students looking at something outside of their expertise. It _only_ got any attention, because it was about Facebook, and so the media saw a chance to sell more…

The students also published it online before it was peer-reviewed. I think the grandparent is more referring to the typical corporate cop-out of "the actions of a few employees", even though the damage is done regardless of who did it--and the employees (or students) did it under the name of the organization.

arXiv papers are pre-peer reviewed (preprint), that is its purpose. There are 500,000 papers on that site or more.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArXiv

And it is standard for authors to list their university affiliations on papers whatever the quality of the paper regardless of whether it is a pre-print or not. Look at every other paper on arXiv, they all have affiliations, and there is a ton of crap on arXiv that will never pass pre-review.

These students didn't do anything wrong in putting the paper online here. Now if they did a PR to the media to promote their work and mis-portrayed it as peer reviewed or authoritative, that is a different matter. But putting a pre-print on arVix with proper affiliations is just standard procedure these days.

Re: Debunking Princeton

#88

Post by chronic25 »

gfodor wrote: post #32
hatred wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people on the Wall Street did take it up a bit seriously perhaps going by the price movement today.

S&P was down a lot too. Just one of an infinite number of reasons to not assume price action on a company can be traced back to a given news story.

No, you're wrong. The article definitely caused price movements.

Re: Debunking Princeton

#89

Post by codersarepeople »

hkmurakami wrote: post #51
hooande wrote: post #13

I hope this becomes a bigger story than the original. I can't tell you how many times someone has thrown a junk science article in my face, thinking that the issue in question was now settled. A survey with a small sample size, outsized extrapolations and numbers that don't match the accompanying conjecture. There should be consequences for the people who publish these things. People have a tendency to believe anythi…

The worst part for me is that the two authors are Ph.D. candidates in MAE (Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering) [1]. They aren't even tenure track faculty at the school and aren't really in a position to carry the name of the school on their shoulders. Yet from what it seems, it will be the school itself that will be hit with most of the public shaming burden (ex: the FB post's headline). As a Princeton alum, I'm a…

I am a current Princeton Ph.D. student in CS. Let me say that if one sees an article saying "Princeton study finds..." they are more likely to pay attention to it. Thus, unfortunately, we must also bare the brunt of bad press like this.

On the OTHER hand, this was a non-peer reviewed thought experiment by some MAE students outside their area. It would be akin to me turning in an assignment for a class and the media ran with it saying "Princeton study..."

Unfortunately, readers are going to read this rebuttal as an attack on Princeton, which it really isn't; if anything it's only funny because of how strong Princeton really is.

Re: Debunking Princeton

#90

Post by argumentum »

hooande wrote: post #13

I hope this becomes a bigger story than the original. I can't tell you how many times someone has thrown a junk science article in my face, thinking that the issue in question was now settled. A survey with a small sample size, outsized extrapolations and numbers that don't match the accompanying conjecture. There should be consequences for the people who publish these things. People have a tendency to believe anythi…

> There should be consequences for the people who publish these things.

The question you pose here isn't whether or not something is "good science", it's about who gets to decide what constitutes "good science" and "bad science".

Science has been able to handle itself quite well over the centuries since it has come into existence. Publishing something, in your name, as these authors have done, is an implicit declaration of what you phrased as "I'm willing to stake my reputation on the idea this trend is real and will continue".

The spirit of free inquiry, on which science is based, demands that we hold nothing sacred and immune from questions. Good science, almost by definition, requires "bad science".

Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it.

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